I'm leaving in a day or two on my one event to promote my Pride/Prejudice: a three-day "mini-tour" of western North Carolina, centered around an invitation to the cosmopolitan Malaprop's in Asheville, and including appearances at two other independent bookstores.

Many people, when they hear I've had a second book published, routinely ask if I'm going on a book tour, even though, for most authors, the tour is no more a part of our lives than manual typewriters or fountain pens (which people also assume we use). We persist in our beloved stereotype of the shy writer who dreads speaking in public, with the agent or publisher pushing this reluctant wallflower into the spotlight, a modern Iphigenia sacrificed for favorable trade winds, or at least good PR.Read More